Helium shortage deflates Syracuse balloon sales, threatens research

Frank Ordonez/The Post-StandardHaun Welding Vice President of Sales Mike Storie stands among 900 empty helium canisters that Haun has not been able to refill because of short supply of heilium.

Last week, Joe Walker had to do something he’s never done in 35 years of the balloon business: Tell someone running a charity event that he couldn’t donate his balloons.

“It broke my heart,” said Walker, owner of Balloons over Syracuse. He set up the balloons for the cancer awareness walk, but the event’s organizers had to pay for the helium: $250 for the tank.

There’s a national shortage of helium. Distributors have started rationing it, and the balloon people are at the bottom of the list.

Some, like Walker, have been able to make do with less helium. Others, like the Tops grocery store in Baldwinsville, couldn’t get enough. They’ve stopped selling helium balloons; a clerk wasn’t sure when they’d resume. Wegmans, so far, has been able to get enough helium from its supplier, a spokeswoman said.

Helium isn’t just for party balloons. It’s all over the science world. The physicists who recently came close to finding the “God particle” are using helium for their research. Helium is used in MRI machines, in making microchips, fiber optic cable, shipbuilding and welding.

All of those uses are first in line before the giant Elmo balloon that stays aloft for weeks.

Mike Storie, vice president of sales for Haun Welding Supply in Syracuse, is a helium distributor with customers throughout the Northeast. Until recently, he’d been able to make up for the shortages from his supplier by calling around and sending trucks all over the country to pick up extra where ever he could find it.

But now, there’s no extra, at any price. There’s a room at his business off Carrier Circle with close to 1,000 empty canisters that should be full of helium. Storie doesn’t expect to fill them anytime soon. And his supplier just notified him that there’s going to be another price increase of 20 percent. His prices had already gone up 50 percent over last year.

“We see no signs of it going backward,” Storie said.

Most of the country’s helium comes from the Federal Helium Reserve near Amarillo, Texas. In 1996, the federal government decided to get out of the helium business, and set a timetable for getting rid of all its helium by 2015. At that time, the government didn’t anticipate how the market would change.

The demand for helium has exploded because of technology manufacturing and helium use in other countries. The wholesale prices haven’t increased the way they normally would as demand increases, said Scott Sears, whose Texas company IACX Energy, sells helium on the wholesale market.

Years of low prices have led to a vastly reduced supply and prices that are starting to skyrocket for some consumers. The government’s helium pricing was blasted in a 2010 report by the National Academy of Sciences.That report found that scientists were already having to delay experiments because they were having trouble getting enough helium for their labs.

Since then, the federal helium price has gone up more. Later this year, it will increase from $75.75 to $84. Last year, the increase was only 75 cents.

Sears said those low prices, combined with some of the few private helium mines going offline because of technical problems, have led to a peak in the shortage.

Helium has always been considered a garbage gas. When natural gas is mined, helium comes with it and has to be removed for the natural gas to be pure enough to be used for fuel. That helium was sold, but it was rarely mined alone. But now, the demand for helium is so high that people like Sears are looking at the idea of mining helium without natural gas.

His company purifies natural gas when it’s mined. He said he’s been getting $200 per thousand cubic foot of helium, more than 150 percent over the federal price. Sears said he gets at least three calls a day from people looking to buy helium.

“We’ll sell to anybody if they hit our number,” Sears said.

Jim Parker, of Seattle, runs Balloon Planet, a national network of balloons stores that sell balloon arrangements online, similar to Teleflora.

“So many of our partners are calling in and saying, ‘what are we going to do?’¤” Parker said.

So far, all of them have seen their helium prices rise and their supply of helium go down, but only two have been completely unable to get any helium. That happened two weeks ago to two shops in Canada. They had to shut down, Parker said.

Parker surveyed his 110 participating balloon sellers: their average helium price increase was 68 percent. Parker also put out guidelines to help them address the shortage, including switching whatever designs possible from helium-filled to plain air and using an air-helium mixture where they can. The foil balloons are too heavy, and will only float when they’re inflated with helium.

Walker, the Syracuse balloon seller, said his budget for helium has gone up 40 percent in the past year. He said he’s accepted that the helium market is changed for good. So he’s changed his business, too. Balloons inflated with just air are about 25 percent of his business now, compared with just 5 percent a year ago.

“If you want to be in business for a while and you don’t want to change, you’re not going to be in business for a while,” Walker said.